I was the last to reach Elson's bed and his appearance startled me. The Elemental looked shrunken; his brush with death had exhausted his body. He lay limp in his wrappings of bandages and burn dressings. Bruises and lacerations covered much of his exposed skin and one of his eyes was swollen shut. Despite the punishment he had taken, his spirit was unbroken, as I learned when he addressed the Colonel.

"I thought I'd be hearing from you, Wolf. Is this your council of execution?"

"Hardly," said Jaime Wolf.

Elson managed a mangled chuckle. "Is the prognosis that bad?"

Shaking his head, the Colonel replied, "The doctors say you're a fighter, and they give you a fair chance. I want to do the same."

Elson said something under his breath, but I didn't catch the words. I doubt anyone else did either. The Colonel looked at him silently for a moment, then cleared his throat.

"We fought over the Dragoons because they weren't what either one of us wanted them to be. I gave up on them for a while because I was tired. I let my personal feelings get in the way of my judgement, my duty."

"I am not your counselor, Wolf."

"You're wrong, Elson." The Colonel walked from the foot of the bed to the head and sat down on a stool Atwyl handed him. "The Dragoons are going to be different now. We've both been part of making sure of that.

"Once I thought I was keeping the Dragoons alive by changing them as they needed to be changed, but I didn't have it quite right. I'm a strategist, not a sociologist. I was operating in a field I didn't know, and I botched it. I didn't really understand some of what had happened to us, some of the changes we had already been through. We had come a long way from our Clan heritage, but I forgot that some of us didn't have the same history, might not even want to have that history. You opened my eyes."

"I would have opened your throat," Elson said weakly.

"And that was only what you considered to be right. I know that in your eyes I had failed as a leader. In some ways, you were right. Some of my policies were wrong. I can see that now. I didn't take enough account of how we had changed or how little we were doing to make our newcomers at home. Poor treatment of those who were not born of the elite is a standard complaint the freeborn have about the Clans, but we made the same mistakes. Nobody wants to live as a second-class citizen. I thought we'd get past it, though. I thought that with enough time things would smooth out, but there wasn't enough time. There's never enough time."

"I will not absolve you."

"I'm not asking you to. Things can't be what they were, but then I don't suppose anything ever stays the same. Life means change, and if you don't change, you aren't alive, quiafflI think you understand what it means to try to make things right and fail."

Elson rolled his head so that he faced away from the Colonel. "I am prepared to accept the fate of those who fail," he said softly.

"Are you still prepared to fight? I want to change what went before, I want everyone who wears the Dragoon patch to be a part of the Dragoons, and I want to see that everyone earns his or her place and that no one gets a place unearned. Isn't that a lot of what you were fighting for? Do you still have the strength to fight for it?"

Facing the Colonel again, Elson asked, "What do you mean?"

"It was distrust and misunderstanding that brought us to this point."

"And not a little ambition," Atwyl interrupted.

"No one's denying that, Ham," the Colonel said without looking at him. "Ambition is not necessarily bad. Sometimes it's exactly what's needed. I have ambitions, too. I intend to make what we went through a crucible from which a better organization will emerge. It's clear now that we can't be what we were. We're not Clan any more than we are Inner Sphere; we're a blend of the two. More than that, we're what our lives and battles have made us. We won't find our future by clinging to the past; we've got to chart a new course."

Elson squinted his good eye at Wolf. "You cannot be suggesting that we abandon the honor road."

"The path of honor is a concept older than the Clans' honor road. It's meant a lot of different things to people over time, but I think there are certain basics. I'd never ask you, or anyone, to abandon those. If you've got to have an honor road, we need to find one that will also be the Dragoons' honor road. We're not a Clan, and we're not the resurrected Star League Army, either. We hire our warriors out, but we're not justa mercenary company. We're something different, something new. Are you willing to help me find a new road, Elson?"

"I cannot be part of this."

"Why not? Scared?" Maeve taunted.

"I am born of the Clans," Elson said, frowning in his pride. "Their heritage is in my blood. Though I was freeborn, I knew I was part of something when I was with the Nova Cats. I must bepart of something. I cannot be a mercenary."

"You are part of something," the Colonel insisted. "Us."

"Wolf Pack," Maeve said with a grin. "That's not a name I approve," Jaime Wolf said. "Too late." She grinned wider. "It's gonna stick."

"We're the Dragoons," he insisted. "Yeah, WolfsDragoons. We're the Wolf Pack, too."

"I am neither," Elson said.

"You were rebellious, but you are a warrior," the Colonel told him. "Warriors of the Clans sometimes fail a challenge. That does not make them outlaw. The testing that you provided has strengthened the Dragoons. Though it was a testing harder than I would have liked, I think we will be the better for it. Especially if you will see that we can make it better together. "

"I no longer understand you."

"The Colonel is offering you a restoration to the ranks," Nichole said.

"You're being honored, lout," Atwyl said.

Elson's good eye flashed anger at Atwyl, but it was a momentary flare. He looked calmly at the Colonel. "You have mastered me, Jaime Wolf. I can accept you as my Khan."

Shaking his head, the Colonel said, "No Khans. That's the Clan way. But I do think I will need a position other than colonel. This first-among-officers arrangement will not bear the weight of planetary administration. I'll be taking the title of Commander."

"I do not care what you call yourself. The arrangement is the same."

"Then you accept?" Nichole asked anxiously.

Again Elson said, "I will loyally serve the man who has proved my master."

Epilogue

Secrets are curious things. You never know when they really are secrets, although you usually know when they are not. How can you be sure that your buddy doesn't know the secret and isn't telling you because he's promised somebody else that he'll keep his mouth shut? It has also been said that three can keep a secret when two are dead, but that old saw doesn't take into account the value of the secret to those who hold it. If you benefit from something staying secret, or if you'll be harmed if word gets out, you're much more likely to stay quiet.

Being a member of Commander Wolf's staff makes a person privy to many secrets. Most are military secrets, usually fleeting information on positioning and available forces. But some involve other matters, more personal matters. Some of the secrets are kept on what is called a "need-to-know" basis; you're only told if you "need to know." Being a member of the Commander's staff, however, sometimes means that you can find out more than you "need to know."